3 ms·
What's illuminating about this? He's just saying his engineers work longer hours, 24 hour a day (hyperbole)
by arboles 3y ago
What's illuminating about this? He's just saying his engineers work longer hours, 24 hour a day (hyperbole)
- raincole 3y agoIt's not hyperbole tho. Quite a lot people work in shifts in TSMC.
- adrian_b 3y agoA few decades ago, I have worked for some years in an European semiconductor fab. There the R&D engineers also worked in 3 shifts, to follow experimental wafer batches all day. However, most of the time the R&D engineers worked in the normal shift. By rotation, a few worked in the evening shift and even fewer worked in the night shift, typically only when it was expected that after finishing some process step it will be necessary to measure test structures on the experimental silicon wafers and make decisions about process parameters for the following process steps. So work at least partially in shifts is really expected in such an environment, because it is inefficient and costly to stop the processing of a wafer batch and wait until next morning, when an R&D engineer would come and would decide what to do with the wafers next.
- KirillPanov 3y agoWow, you completely mangled what he said. His engineers work three shifts. They aren't (necessarily) working longer hours. But they're willing to work second and third shift at times, which R&D engineers in bascially every other first-world country refuse to do. If you had a bunch of R&D engineers willing to work 16-hour days every day of the week, as long as they could sleep from midnight to 8am, you still wouldn't be able to keep up with TSMC. It isn't longer hours.
- MichaelZuo 3y agoConsidering how much fabs cost, or so all publications say, it's actually surprising for any R&D departments to not run three shifts 24/7 to maximize utilization. When 1 EUV machine setup and ready is a quarter billion dollars...
- HellDunkel 3y agoBut why do they need to work in shifts? Cant you just set up a second and third lab?
- JCharante 3y agoSeems like a waste of money because the lab equipment is unused 16 hours a day.
- KirillPanov 3y agoWhen you're talking about the very bleeding edge you can't simply buy twice as many EUV steppers in the next few months no matter how much you pay. That few months of lead time is the difference between TSMC and everybody else. No amount of cash will make it go away.
- caskstrength 3y ago> But they're willing to work second and third shift at times, which R&D engineers in bascially every other first-world country refuse to do. What do you mean by "refuse"? If the price is right plenty of people would agree. Although I suspect the value I would bring during night shifts would be net negative...
- jdlshore 3y agoThere’s a point at which money is no longer the deciding factor in people’s decision making. The amount of money required to make it a deciding factor again is uneconomical, and is of the “I’ll do this for a few years, then retire” variety, which is a net negative due to brain drain. So, no, just paying people more isn’t the answer.
- caskstrength 3y agoFrom what I heard salaries of HW engineers are not anywhere close to FAANG SW engineers. I don't think paying double for night shifts would put them anywhere close to “I’ll do this for a few years, then retire”.